Still In Love
by ShirleyTemple24
Summary: "Mommy, how did you and Daddy meet?" A mother-daughter talk. Reminiscing. Daddy-daughter cuteness. Fluff. Post-S4 AU.


_A/N: It has been one year since I wrote/posted my very first FanFic! Woohoo! It was a Valentine's Day themed fic, and I was going to write another one this year but didn't have time. I wrote this, though, and it seems appropriate; so here's a little something for Valentine's Day. 3 *big kiss*_

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><p>Michelle looked up from a report she was working on at her kitchen table as her daughter pranced into the room with lips about three shades darker than their normal color. She was grinning somewhat mischievously as Michelle crinkled her forehead and tilted her head to the side in scrutiny. "Maddie, what do you have on your lips?"<p>

"I put on some of your lipstick!" she giggled. "Don't I look pretty?"

Michelle gave her a look and beckoned her over. "You do look pretty, but, honey, you know you're not supposed to get into Mommy's make-up. Don't let your daddy see you with all that on."

"He doesn't think lipstick is pretty?"

"Not on his baby girl."

"But he likes it when you wear it?"

"Mm, I guess so." Michelle wiped off the excess lipstick with her thumb, chuckling at her six-year-old's messy application.

"Don't wipe it _all_ off!" she protested, pulling away slightly.

"I'm not, I'm not. I'm just fixing it." Michelle smiled when she finished and grabbed a sheet of Kleenex to wipe off the color smudged on her fingers. "There. That looks much better."

The smile returned to Maddie's face as she got up in a chair beside her mom to watch her work. Minutes passed before she became bored and started twirling her mother's wedding band with her little index finger, Michelle completely inattentive to the action. The miniature versions of Michelle's brown eyes suddenly turned curious and then looked up with interest. "Mommy, how did you and Daddy meet?"

Michelle paused from her work and looked at her daughter for a moment. "How did we meet?" Maddie nodded. "At work."

"Oh, yeah... So you worked together and then you got a crush on him?"

Michelle stopped what she was doing and snickered at the head of wavy, brown hair that was now staring at her and tilted to the side curiously. "Well, I thought he was cute and really smart and a good man, and I liked him a lot."

Maddie burst into a fit of giggles at Michelle's statement. "You thought Daddy was cute?"

The excessive amounts of laughter pouring out of her daughter prompted another snicker out of Michelle, and she raised her eyebrows in amusement. "What? Daddy can't be cute? Then I thought he was very handsome. How's that?"

The giggles subsided as Maddie apparently found that assessment much more sensible. "Did you want to kiss him?" she questioned, eyes and smile expanding, scandalously intrigued.

Michelle held in a laugh, raising her eyebrows at Maddie before turning to her work again, "You're too young to talk like that, Madelyn."

"But did you?" the fascinated little girl persisted.

Michelle blushed and clandestinely smirked to herself as she was forced to recollect going in for that first kiss in that dark hallway in CTU. Yeah, yeah, she had wanted to kiss him, but she hadn't actually planned on doing it. She sighed and turned back to Maddie, trying to hold back the grin tugging at her lips. "Yes... Once we got to know each other I did."

"Ooooo." Maddie's eyes brightened at at her mother's answer. "He prob'ly wanted to kiss you, too, huh?"

"Probably."

"Then after you got a crush on him, then what? Then did you fall in love?"

"Well, first he asked me out on a date," Michelle explained while again recollecting the same day that had birthed that first kiss. So many memories—good and bad—existed from that day. It seemed like centuries ago, yet she could remember it all so clearly. "Actually, _I_ had to ask him out on a date first because he was too shy."

Maddie snickered at the knowledge, but continued. "So then you went on a date and then you fell in love? And then you got married?"

Michelle shrugged. "Yeah, something like that."

"Did you hafta ask Daddy to marry you, too?" Maddie remarked, a sassy grin lifting her cheeks.

"Noooo. He asked _me_ to marry _him_, silly." Michelle couldn't help but laugh at the six-year-old wit and reached over to tickle her daughter. As Maddie's ticklish laughs filled the room, Michelle planted a kiss on her soft, dark hair, silently thanking herself for going for the kiss _and_asking Tony out. "I love you."

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><p>"Hey, Daddy?" The voice of his daughter broke Tony's focus on some numbers he'd been working up at his desk.<p>

He removed his reading glasses and turned to the small figure that was padding into his home office. "Yeah, sweetheart?"

"Earlier before you got home, Mama told me that you and her met at work," she declared, leaning against his desk.

"Yeah, we did." Tony leaned back in his chair and watched the brown eyes staring at him light up with interest.

"Did you meet her and then get a crush on her?"

Laughing, Tony looked down and then back up at his daughter. "A crush?"

Maddie nodded nonchalantly.

"Uhh, yeah, I guess so. I liked her, if that's what you mean."

A hint of a smile sparked on the kid's face, and she pressed her lips together before continuing. "Did you think she was beautiful?"

"Very beautiful," Tony agreed as Maddie easily smiled back at him.

"And what else?"

Tony thought for a second and then smiled at the memory of Michelle's first days at CTU. She was the best. He had instantly loved working with her and had been so nervous to get too close to her, but at the same time he had never felt so close to someone so naturally. There were a million great things about her, but he simply answered, "I thought she was smart. And really nice."

Maddie hummed before her face changed. "Mom said she thought you were cute!" she expressed through a laugh.

Tony chuckled and possibly blushed a little at the thought of Michelle thinking he was cute. "Hey, what's wrong with that?" he asked the clearly amused child.

"It's funny," she answered honestly before the laughs finally dissipated. She became more serious again and took a step closer to her dad. "So after you had a crush on her, then what?"

"Umm, then eventually I asked her on a date."

"Nuh-uh. Mom told me she asked _you_ on a date first," Maddie objected, raising her eyebrows and pointing at him for emphasis when she said "you."

In a flash, Tony was convicted of the truth that hadn't even crossed his mind. He winced a little as he remembered that his daughter was in fact correct. Michelle had technically made the first move. "She did, did she?"

As her eyes continued to penetrate him under still-raised eyebrows, he sighed. His pride told him it was easier admitting it to his daughter now than it was going to be to his son in the future. "Yeah, it's true."

"What, were you chicken or something?" Maddie giggled and inquisitively raised her hand, palm up.

He chuckled at the confounded look that faced him. "No, I wasn't chicken," he defended. "It's, it's a long story."

"Mhmm." His sassy daughter rolled her eyes and shook her head, adding a sarcastic, "Men."

Tony couldn't hold back the round of laughter that prodded at him. Where she came up with half the stuff she came up with, he had no clue. But as she smirked back at him, he suddenly remembered something from that moment Michelle did ask him out.

_So you think I just want you for your information?_

The easy sarcasm Michelle had exhibited under her dancing eyes had thrown him over the edge and made him blush at the time. Obviously, his daughter got her wit from his wife.

When the laughter finally subsided, Maddie went on, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "When did you fall in love with her?"

"Mmm," Tony thought about it. It really didn't take much time at all. "Not too long after that."

"After your date?"

"Pretty much."

"And then ya got married."

"Yep."

Maddie smiled and climbed onto Tony's lap, placing a kiss on his cheek. "Are you still in love?"

"I am." He kissed her cheek, too, and reflexively rubbed the spot where she kissed him when he noticed the dark color on her lips and realized it had most likely come off on his skin.

He hated how much she loved wearing Michelle's make-up at only the age of six. She was already gorgeous, and he knew all the boys were going to be after her when she got older. Sometimes mental images of things like her going on _her_ first date taunted him. It scared him to death. She just needed to be his little girl. And stay his little girl.

"You know what? I think you're too young to be talkin' about crushes and fallin' in love, munchkin."

"That's what Mom said." Maddie sighed and rolled her eyes for the second time before fixing them on Tony's.

"Well, your mom's a smart woman, like I said."

He gazed at his daughter who suddenly looked another two years older and decided time was going by way too fast. It felt like just yesterday he was kissing Michelle for the first time in that hallway at CTU, gladly accepting her lips coming at his and not caring about the consequences. He realized then that she had also been the one to kiss him first, and he thanked God she had.

His daughter drew lines on his neck with her finger as she remained focused on his eyes, and he kissed her forehead. "It's a good thing Mommy asked you on a date, huh?"

Indeed.


End file.
